


This is Your Racing Heart

by VJR22_6



Series: Seeing Colors-A Soulmate AU [4]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Gen, Oh also, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate AU, Trans Gyro Gearloose, i guess also romantic if u ship fendra i left that open ended for you to decide, this just in it is platonic soulmate team science hours, trans gandra dee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 00:55:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21485686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VJR22_6/pseuds/VJR22_6
Summary: Gandra was told she'd never see soulmate colors. She was also told she'd never be a hero, and yet.
Relationships: Gandra Dee & Fenton Crackshell Cabrera, Gandra Dee & Gyro Gearloose
Series: Seeing Colors-A Soulmate AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1487042
Comments: 18
Kudos: 62





	This is Your Racing Heart

**Author's Note:**

> What do you do when your FOUR wips are calling your name, you're desperate for gandra content, and you've got a terrible fever making it hard to think straight? You write and post a oneshot without any editing whatsoever.  
Thanks for reading, gaymers. Love you much!
> 
> Title taken from "Laura Palmer" by Bastille.

Her heart is absolutely going berserk.

She can’t keep her fingertips from sparking, her hair all standing on end. She’s sprinting, feet drumming against the pavement in a rhythm she can hardly keep up with. Mind racing, she makes it back to her apartment in record time.

She thinks about her own blue eyes as she scales the fire escape, about how she’d figured that was the only color she’d ever see. About Heron telling her she’d never see “anything past charcoal if she was smart,” about the way Steelbeak’s barking laugh chased her from the room the last time she mentioned soulmates.

So FOWL doesn’t do love. That’s fine. But Gandra looked at Fenton tonight, and she saw something there. A spark. She knows they lie when they say there’s nothing out here for her.

She heads in through the fire escape because she’s still a mess of blue energy, of lightning in her hair and her hands practically fireballs the color of a winter wind. Then she just stands in her bedroom with the lights off for a while, thinking about paddle-balls and little lightbulbs and the thrill of a citywide chase.

The one time someone at FOWL didn’t choose for her what she’d be spending her time doing, and she actually succeeded. Maybe, she figured, they’d be wrong about that. She pictured Fenton’s gaze of adoration at his work, and knew that they were mistaken about him, at least. Gizmoduck was a suit; the hero part was one hundred percent Cabrera heart.

She tossed her gloves onto her nightstand and twirled in the dark, feeling for all the world like a child. They were _wrong_ and she wasn’t broken after all. She’d seen that color and she’d done good. She spun around and around, humming to herself with her eyes closed. They were wrong.

The next time she sees Fenton it’s on the news- disguised, of course- but she can tell under the helmet that he’s smiling for the camera the same way he did for her. She sips her coffee while the older agents scoff and pretends not to have a care, but that night she finds the clip on her laptop and rewatches it again before bed, wrapped in a blanket and blushing like a teenager whose first crush has just noticed them.

When the Moonlanders invade, she gets herself captured and zaps every alien she possibly can, trying to help in her own way, and it feels good again. She catches Fenton’s eye in the crowd around the manor as she’s rushing away, and he gives her a smile that says “don’t worry, I noticed.”

She puts a bouquet of purple flowers on an endtable the next time she meets with the other agents. Nobody mentions it, or the way she holds her head a little higher because she’s got courage from seeing them in the corner of her eye. She only gets a weird look from Phantom, but then again, every look he’s ever given her has been a weird one.

When the plans for taking down the McDucks come out, she makes a choice of her own again.

She copies everything she can onto a flashdrive, takes as many pictures as her eye tech can. Loads herself up with everything she’s got the clearance to know, and walks herself out to the mansion gates. Everybody she’s ever met will be at this big party they’re having, now is her chance to warn them.

She heads up that hill and shakes like a leaf in the wind, but when she tells them what she’s done she’s not cast right back out. In fact, Fenton calls her a “hero of her own making” and gives her a hug that makes her feel like she belongs more than anything the FOWL agents ever did. Those two kids from the lab ask her about a million questions, and someone gets to work on tearing down the threat.

Gyro Gearloose pulls her aside sometime before the night is over. Takes her hand gently and leads her to a curtained-off alcove, lets her have a minute to breathe. Then he looks her in the eye. “I figured if anyone should know, it should be you.

“I used to be part of FOWL myself.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. Doesn’t seem like he does either, just kind of curls in on himself in the chair he’s sitting in. His shoulder is twisted and she can see the strap of a binder beneath his shirt. “They called me by the wrong name every day. Didn’t want me to be… like this.”

“Don’t like that I’m not who I used to be,” Gandra admits. Her heart sinks quickly thinking that he’s seen right through all the work she’s put into presenting, but he barely even notices that. “I saw the pin on your hoodie the first day we met.”

“Oh,” Gandra feels a rush of relief, subconsciously poking the tiny pride pin. “Here I was thinking you were gonna say you hated me for it.”

“You’ll like it around here,” he mutters. “Lots of pride where you wouldn’t think you’d find it.”

She smiles then, a softness of solidarity fending off the bad feelings. This whole “doing good” thing feels even better the second time around.

“You are sticking around, right? We could really use your help.”

“Oh, I- sure. Sure I will.” She sends off a few sparks of nervous electricity, careful that they don’t catch the curtains or carpet. “If you’ll have me.”

“As long as you promise not to ruin my lab again, we’d probably do well having someone like you on the team,” he offers a hand to shake. His shirt turns a gentle green in the blink of an eye as she takes it, finally hoping for the future to go well.

In the next few days, she finally formally meets Manny and Lil Bulb, and the two of them help her get herself settled in a corner of the lab. She gets her nanite equipment set up with their help, learns how to communicate with the clopping and buzzing as good as the others can, if not better solely for willingness to try.

She learns about yellow first, working with the tiniest member of the team on a wiring project. He’s poking his head into the paneling, blinking and humming, and she’s frowning trying to keep them both from being electrocuted- not that it would really hurt either of them at this point, but still- when the device they’re building finally turns on. She’s not even sure what she’s going to use an old video game cabinet for yet, but she salvaged the parts so she wanted to make them work. The screen just flickers to life, Lil Bulb hops out from the paneling, and lights up in the beautiful new color while pointing to the now functioning display.

Manny is a soft beige, she discovers. He’s gray or white, normally, but after days and days of helping each other out (whether it be using fingers where hooves just don’t work, or being the backboard to bounce ideas off of) his color comes into her vision. It’s gentle, like the blankets he wraps around her shoulders on late nights, and calm, like their quiet work together. And really, that’s the color she turns to most when she needs someone to help.

When Fethry comes into the lab, loud and proud and just plain Fethry, he’s quick to become red. She’s not sure why endless infodumping is a good background noise, but she likes playing with her nanite tech while he talks about his krill friends. Especially Mitzi. He loves Mitzi more than sunflowers do the sun, and it’s really endearing to her for no reason at all.

They take a picture together and hang it above the doorway, printed big enough to see from every corner, and she looks up from her work every day to see them together, and smiling, and in a rainbow of their colors, and she feels like she belongs now more than ever before.


End file.
